The conviction of Daniel Sancho for the murder of Edwin Arrieta in Thailand brings to a close the crime that has attracted the most attention on Spanish television and media in the last year. A 30-year-old son of a famous man, the confessions, the dismemberment… The press has followed the case down to the smallest details, which has even become an HBO Max docuseries – which includes a paid interview with the father of the famous man convicted, the actor Rodolfo Sancho, which premiered on the same day that the trial began in Thailand.
On July 31, 2023, Daniel Sancho and Edwin Arrieta arrive on the island of Ko Phan-ngan, where they had apparently met for the full moon party. A day later, cameras in a store record Sancho buying a saw, knives, detergent, and other utensils. Another camera captures the two traveling on a motorbike. A day later, on August 2, Sancho kills Arrieta in his bungalow, dismembers him, gets into a kayak, and throws some of the remains of the body into the sea. The other bags are deposited in a local dump.
On August 3, Arrieta’s family contacted Sancho after he failed to speak to them and he reported her missing to the police station. At the same time, someone discovered a human pelvis in a landfill and the Police opened an investigation. The next day, more remains appeared in the landfill and the officers arrested and questioned Sancho, who had suspicious scratches on his arms. In his first version, the accused stated that he had not heard from Arrieta since the previous night.
The next day, August 4, Sancho remained in custody and ended up confessing that he was the one who killed and dismembered Arrieta. Since then, the young man has been in preventive detention, accused of murder, concealment of the body and loss of the victim’s papers. Contrary to the prosecutor’s theory, Sancho only admitted to concealing the body, denying the loss of the documents and assuring that Arrieta’s death was not a premeditated murder, but the result of a fight. The accused reported that Arrieta was holding him “hostage”, that he had “threatened” him and that he wanted to have a relationship with him.
A last-minute hotel change and the purchase of the saw and other utensils are the main elements of the prosecution’s claim of premeditated murder. Sancho said the material was intended for a video for his YouTube cooking channel, which had been outdated for several months by then.
The autopsy could not determine the cause of death because key parts of the victim’s body were missing. However, a few months before the final report, the number two of the police stated that Arrieta had not died from beatings, but rather from a slit throat.
In January, months before the trial, Sancho’s lawyers held a press conference in which they denounced the irregularities in the investigation. They claim that the defendant was promised deportation within 48 hours if he cooperated and that he signed documents in Thai under deception. A few weeks later, the authorities announced that two important pieces of evidence, the knife and the saw, had disappeared.
The trial was finally held between April 9 and May 3 of this year, behind closed doors, and not even the identity of the judge in charge of the case was revealed. The trial ended with Sancho’s final statement, which lasted about 45 minutes, in which he apologized for dismembering and trying to make the body disappear, claiming that he had never wanted to kill Arrieta and that he had acted in self-defense.
The Thai penal code punishes murder with sentences ranging from 15 years in prison to the death penalty, which punishes premeditated murder, among other things – although for years the maximum sentence has not been applied or has generally been reduced. Sancho could request a transfer to Spanish prisons under an agreement signed between Spain and Thailand in 1983, but to do so he would have to have served a third of his sentence in that country, ask for forgiveness and request a transfer to Spanish prisons. authorities.
Sancho was finally sentenced this Thursday to life imprisonment. The judge noted that the sentence had been reduced from the death penalty to life imprisonment thanks to the defendant’s collaboration in the investigation. He was also ordered to pay Arrieta’s family compensation of 4 million dollars (nearly 119,000 dollars, or about 107,000 euros).
